Pentagon Sees Little Risk in Allowing Gay Men and Women to Serve Openly

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, left, and Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, discussing the report.Credit
Drew Angerer/The New York Times

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon has concluded that allowing gay men and women to serve openly in the United States armed forces presents a low risk to the military’s effectiveness, even at a time of war, and that 70 percent of surveyed service members believe that the impact on their units would be positive, mixed or of no consequence at all.

In an exhaustive nine-month study on the effects of repealing “don’t ask, don’t tell,” the 17-year-old policy that requires gay service members to keep their sexual orientation secret or face discharge, the authors concluded that repeal would in the short run most likely bring about “some limited and isolated disruption to unit cohesion and retention.” But they said those effects could be mitigated by effective leadership.

The report, by Jeh C. Johnson, the Pentagon’s chief legal counsel, and Gen. Carter F. Ham, the commander of the United States Army in Europe, also found that much of the concern in the armed forces about openly gay service members was driven by misperceptions and stereotypes. Leaving aside those with moral and religious objections to homosexuality, the authors said the concerns were “exaggerated and not consistent with the reported experiences of many service members.”

At a news conference on Tuesday announcing the release of the report, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said repeal “would not be the wrenching, traumatic change that many have feared and predicted.” He said it was a “matter of urgency” that the lame-duck Senate vote in the next weeks to repeal the law.

In a survey of 115,000 active-duty and reserve service members, the report found distinct differences among the branches of the military, particularly in the Marine Corps, whose leaders have been the most publicly opposed to allowing gay and bisexual men and women to serve openly. While 30 percent of those surveyed over all predicted that repeal would have some negative effects, 40 percent to 60 percent of the Marine Corps and those in various combat specialties said it would be negative.

Mr. Johnson and General Ham, who briefed reporters on the report, did not offer a specific explanation for why Marines were more opposed to repeal, although General Ham said that among Marine Corps respondents, a lower percentage had served alongside someone they believed to be gay or lesbian. This summer, when the Marine commandant at the time, Gen. James T. Conway, was asked for an explanation about Marine resistance to repeal, he responded that it was difficult to answer, but “we recruit a certain type of young American, a pretty macho guy or gal.”

In his remarks to reporters on Tuesday, Mr. Gates acknowledged the higher levels of “discomfort” about repealing the law among those in the combat branches of the military. He said that those findings remained a concern to him as well as to the chiefs of the service branches, but that the concerns were not insurmountable as long as any repeal was carried out carefully and with what he said was “sufficient time and preparation to get the job done right.”

Mr. Gates refused to offer a timetable for how long that might be, and neither Mr. Johnson nor General Ham would say whether the process could take months or years. As the bill before the Senate now stands, any repeal would not be carried out until President Obama, Mr. Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, certified that the military was ready to end the ban.

Mr. Gates said much of the preparation would involve educating and training service members and their leaders.

Mr. Obama, who campaigned for president on a promise to repeal the law, hailed the study. “Today’s report confirms that a strong majority of our military men and women and their families — more than two-thirds — are prepared to serve alongside Americans who are openly gay and lesbian,” he said in a statement.

Democrats in the Senate also applauded the study, but Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican who has vowed to block the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” was largely silent, at least by early evening.

“Senator McCain and his staff are currently in the process of carefully reviewing the Pentagon’s report regarding the repeal of the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ law,” Brooke Buchanan, a spokeswoman, said in a statement.

Mr. McCain has said in the past that he would consider authorizing a repeal of the law once the Pentagon review was complete, but he has also cited the concerns of the service chiefs for his resistance to ending the ban.

The House passed its version of a repeal of the law this past summer, but prospects for passage in the Senate remain uncertain, with time running out this year. Mr. Gates, Admiral Mullen, Mr. Johnson and General Ham are scheduled to testify on the report to the Senate on Thursday, but a more important session will come on Friday, when the Senate Armed Services Committee is to hear testimony from the chiefs of the Army, Navy and Air Force and the commandants of the Marines and the Coast Guard.

The service chiefs have all expressed reluctance in the recent past about repeal, and it is unclear how they will present themselves on Friday. Mr. Obama summoned them to the White House on Monday to talk exclusively about “don’t ask, don’t tell” and afterward told aides he would not discuss the specifics of what was said.

The Pentagon report on “don’t ask, don’t tell” also found that 69 percent of those surveyed believed they had already worked with a gay man or woman. Of those, 92 percent reported that the unit’s ability to work together was very good, good or “neither good nor poor.”

In the most strongly worded section of the report, the authors concluded that while their mandate was to assess the impact of repealing the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy — and not to determine whether it should be repealed — they had done just that.

“We are both convinced that our military can do this, even during this time of war,” Mr. Johnson and General Ham wrote. “We do not underestimate the challenges in implementing a change in the law, but neither should we underestimate the ability of our extraordinarily dedicated service men and women to adapt to such change and continue to provide our nation with the military capability to accomplish any mission.”

The study recommended no housing or living changes as a result of any repeal, and the authors also quashed any suggestion that there should be separate bathroom facilities.

They called separate bathrooms “a logistical nightmare, expensive and impossible to administer.”

Peter Baker contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on December 1, 2010, on page A21 of the New York edition with the headline: Pentagon Sees Little Risk in Allowing Gay Men and Women to Serve Openly. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe